Below is a guide to live internet/web
coverage of the 2005 Tour de France.

NOTE: Added ESPN's "Tour de France Tracker" to the
Live Ticker links in our "Live Guide" below. Not sure how up-to-date
they keep it but it may be worth a look. The map is clickable allowing
you to see who got points at intermediate sprint and king of the mountain
locations on the route. The map also indicates the "current" position
of the race and allows you to view the stage profile. This is a "Flash"
application. You may need to select the current stage yourself.

You will find a link to the ESPN Tour Tracker in
our "Live Guide" below

Notes: CSC's Dave Zabriskie did
it again, adding a Tour de France stage win to his 2004 Tour of Spain
(Vuelta a España) and 2005 Tour of Italy (Giro d'Italia) stage
wins. This is Zabriskie's first Tour de France and to start it off
with a win in the very first stage, taking this race's first yellow jersey
and in the process breaking the record (previously held by fellow American
Greg Lemond) for speed in a non-prologue Tour time trial is just phenomenal.
The former USPS rider couldn't have picked a better time to offer
hope for the future of U.S. cycling, with Lance Armstrong retiring later
this month.

Speaking of Armstrong, he rode a great Stage 1 time trial
himself, likely his fastest ever, just 2 seconds slower than Zabriskie.
Zabriskie and Armstrong dominated the field, with Alexandre Vinokourov
in third place at 53 seconds. Not surprisingly, the climbers such
as Heras and Mayo lost significant time to Armstrong already, though Mayo
finishing at a huge 3:15 behind Zabriskie over just 19km shows that he (Mayo)
has not improved his time trialing. But the big surprise of the day
was T-Mobile's Jan Ullrich falling 1:06 behind Armstrong and finishing 12th.
Departing one minute after Ullrich, Armstrong actually passed him
with under 4km to go, a humiliation on the road that no one expected to
ever see involving these two great champions and an image destined to make
it into all the 2005 Tour videos and photo albums. It wasn't a total
disaster for Ullrich, and it was probably due to his recovering from the
previous day's crash while out training, but when you consider that the
closest Ullrich has been to Armstrong at the finish of the latter's Tour
wins was 1:01 (2003), losing 1:06 to Armstrong on just the first day of this
race certainly complicates things for the German. He also missed an
opportunity to put even more time into other contenders for the podium, the
climbing specialists in particular.

Team CSC was best on the day, determined by taking the times of each
team's top 3 finishers, followed by Discovery Channel at just 4 seconds
back and Phonak at 1:33.

NOTE: We are in the process of verifying links
for various options for live coverage, including live audio. More
links are on the way too. Some links may not work until race coverage
actually begins. Be sure to occasionally reload/refresh this page
to get the latest links update.

Guide to live race coverage on the internet/web

Notes: The 2005 Tour de France
gets underway with a 19km individual time trial from Fromentine to the
island of Noirmoutier on the Atlantic coast. This is called "Stage
1" instead of the usual "Prologue" because prologues by definition are
8km or less in distance.

19km is long enough for the top time trialists and overall contenders
such as Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich to hope to gain significant time
on the smaller climbers such as Iban Mayo and Roberto Heras, particularly
given the expected headwinds along the coast. Today is all the more
important for the better time trialists given that there is only one
really long time trial in this Tour, instead of the usual two, a 55km
effort around Saint-Etienne on the penultimate day of the race. So
they need to make today count.

The top teams for the overall victory such as Discovery Channel,
Team CSC, Phonak and T-Mobile will all be looking to get great results
today from all their good time trialists in view of earning a more favorable
start position in Tuesday's Team Time Trial. (The teams with riders
performing best will depart last in the Team Time Trial on Tuesday, therefore
benefitting from the knowledge of how other teams are doing on the course.)

Time trial specialists such as Michael Rich (Gerolsteiner) and Fabian
Cancellara (Fassa Bortolo) will also be looking for individual glory
today.

Lance Armstrong's
quest for a seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France begins
this Saturday. As we've done since the first race in the ProTour,
Paris-Nice way back in March, and for many non-ProTour events as well,
we'll have the links to live web and internet coverage right here. If
it's live on the internet (streaming video, audio, graphics, text), we'll
make it all easily accessible from one place, right here.

cyclingfans.com "Live
Guides," all season long links to available live video streaming, audio,
graphics, text tickers and official web sites

In terms of pure excitement, this year's Tour de France has a tough
act to follow in May's Giro d'Italia. But by announcing this as
his last race as a professional cyclist, win or lose, Lance Armstrong
has invited his rivals to bring it on one last time, one last high stakes
game of "king of the hill". And from Jan Ullrich and Alexandre Vinokourov
to Ivan Basso, Iban Mayo, Roberto Heras, Floyd Landis, Santiago Botero
and Levi Leipheimer, it appears the invitation has been accepted with enthusiasm.
Some of these riders are riding better than ever, better in the mountains
and/or in the time trials. Some have returned to the great form they
had earlier in their careers. Some have chosen to wait until the
Tour to show what they've got. All will attack Lance on the road
or seek to profit from the attacks of others.

The powerful Discovery Channel team will seek
to continue the annual Postal game-plan of controlling the race. The
rival teams just might make the race uncontrollable this year.

It could be epic.

-----
Meanwhile, in the women's "Tour de France".....

3-time winner and defending champion Joane Sommariba
before the final stage of the 2003 "Grand Boucle," her last "Tour"

Almost completely unnoticed by the media,
the 2005 edition of the Grande Boucle Feminine Internationale (women's
"Tour de France") got underway yesterday. The race was not held
in 2004, has been reduced to five days (six stages) and is missing most
of the star riders of recent years, notably 3-time winner Joane Sommariba
who had previously announced the 2003 edition as her last "Tour" anyway.
Hopefully enough spectators will get out to encourage the women
who are racing.